Lewis Mumford Quotes

Southern men declare that their slaves are better off than hired laborers amongst us. How little they know, whereof they speak! There is no permanent class of hired laborers amongst us.

I would prefer to use a very inclusive definition of the working class. I'd like to include all of those people who are, if they're not exploited by an immediate employer over them, they're exploited by the system and therefore have a cause to want to change the system. Having a very inclusive definition of the working class creates a great opportunity for organizing people.

Let no one try to justify the glaring difference between the classes and the masses, the prince and the pauper, by saying that the former need more.

In our Country... one class of men makes war and leaves another to fight it out.

Class structures are a luxury that we cannot afford.

I would rather write for the instruction, or even the amusement of the poor than for the amusement of the rich.

All past history with the exception of the primitive stages was the history of class struggles.

While there is a lower class, I am in it. While there is a criminal element, I am of it. And while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.

The question is very simple. Shall the common man be pushed back in the mud, or shall he not? That was the real issue of the Spanish war.

History shows that when you have continuing income inequality it is an invitation to class conflict.

Choose equality …. Inequality has the natural and necessary effect … of materializing our upper class, vulgarizing our middle class, and brutalizing our lower class.

…in every city are found two diverse humors, and this arises from the fact that the common people desire neither to be commanded nor oppressed by the great, and the powerful men desire to command and oppress the people..

I was not the one to invent lies: they were created in a society divided by class and each of us inherited lies when we were born. It is not by refusing to lie that we will abolish lies: it is by eradicating class by any means necessary.

Charity has always been a expression of the guilty consciences of a ruling class.

Tough love is just the right phrase: love for the rich and privileged, tough for everyone else.

The US government is usually on the wrong side against the poor and downtrodden, because the wrong side is the right side, given the class interests upon which the [US] policy is fixed.

There are too many people trying to take opportunity from people in the middle class.

All the old history was written for the amusement of the ruling classes. The lower classes couldn't read, and their rulers didn't care about remembering what happened to them.

The laboring people should unite and should protect themselves against all idlers. You can divide mankind into two classes: the laborers and the idlers, the supporters and the supported, the honest and the dishonest. Every man is dishonest who lives upon the unpaid labor of others, no matter if he occupies a throne. All laborers should be brothers.

There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher.

The class warfare was in the script as well. It establishes what the world is like and what would happen if we really had two zones that were left and everybody had to survive using these two areas. What would our society to do with that set up? I wanted the state of world, in my mind, how it would actually realistically unfold. I drew that from what was in the script.

The Democrat Party makes as many people victims as possible because it freezes them right where they are. And that's usually in lower middle class or abject poverty. It makes them resentful.

There is far too little discussion in Washington about the collapse of the middle class , almost no discussion at all about the incredible income inequality and wealth inequality in this country, and the fact that we're moving toward an oligarch form of society.

From class consciousness to class hatred was but a step.

[The ruling elites] know who their enemies are, and their enemies are the people, the people at home and the people abroad. Their enemies are anybody who wants more social justice, anybody who wants to use the surplus value of society for social needs rather than for individual class greed, that's their enemy.